After taking my mother’s fairly expensive book on knots, name escapes me, I’ve become addicted to learning as many bends, knots, and hitches as possible. I’m a fisherman and my favorite hitch for tying a small anchor is the anchor bend variant. I LOVE this hitch and not only is it neat, compact and secure, it looks damn good. My favorite hitch for tying my hook is the palomar knot. I’ve used the improved clinch, half blood knot, trilene knot etc, but the palomar just does a better job IMO.
Since I know very little about this subject, I’d like to hear some experts advice on what they would use on a twenty pound anchor and what they would use on a fishing hook. The ossel hitch is one of my favorites too.
One more question, what’s the best way to tie off an extension ladder on top of my van without using cheap bungie chords. I have ladder racks on top of my van and haven’t figured out a decent way of tying them down. I use cheap bungie chords and want to start using rope for security purposes but also want something easy to untie.
Welcome to the forum! Sounds like you have followed some good advice already re: the Palomar and the AB variant. As for your ladder racks - have you seen/heard of what we sailors call daisy-chaining? Fix one end of your line, pass a bight under the object (“object” = “a sail” for us, a ladder for you) but keep the standing line on the same side of your object. Then make a second bight and pass it through the first one, wrap the second bight around under the object, form a third bight and pass it through the second and so on until you have wrapped the object along its length to the ladder rack. Then secure the end with a couple of half hitches or a buntline hitch and, when it comes time to release, remove the last fixing and pull the end to see the object unzippered all the way along! Good luck and do let us know what works for you…
Thanks SR, I’ve seen a picture or two of that knot while searching this site. I’ll give it a shot, although it seems a little daunting I’m sure I can familiarize myself with the details of it. I like the way it unties, I can’t waste twenty minutes on a job trying to untie some crazy knot I’ve tied.lol. But, I do need something more reliable than bungie chords and I feel ashamed now for not using rope because I’ve really gotten into knots, bends and hitches.
In my opinion, the main issue with the bungees mostly used is safety. A bungee with a hook on the end can cost you your eyesight.
I use bungee cord, what sailors use to call shock cord (a cut piece, no hardware), for tying items to my bicycle rack; I think the same procedure would work for a ladder on a rack. The knot I use is a fairly new one, the Gleipnir, whare I mostly tie with two splayed loops, rather than around the whole thing. I.e. one loop around the rack one side of the ladder, the other loop on the other side and the TurNip in the middle. The Gleipnir is a very simple knot that will hold the two ends in one single turn http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=1449.0. If you’d rather use cord, the knot serves well also in other materials.
welcome of course, but please, do not let your being ashamed of not using knots let you do something insecure with the ladder. In my home town I witness what a ladder coming loose can do. It was not a good ending to the story of two lives.
Take extra time to secure it with either rope, wire or shock cord. Using rope I would make sure to include extra wraps around both rack and rungs. There are unexpected loads to consider.
So I know that I’ve said it, the use of ratcheting tie-downs is a favorite of those who carry a ridiculous amount of ladders on their vans. I know most have seen these going down the road and wonder how that vehicle doesn’t flip on its side.
Make sure the tie -down is rated for the load or over rated!
And check your rack every so often.
Just make sure that you use a secure finishing knot, and that you are able to get good tension at each step.
I would avoid using the “Gleipnir”. Its security problems were brought up repeatedly in its debut thread. I don’t want you to have your ladder flying off and crashing through someone’s windshield. Plus, it just doesn’t get very tight.
Any chance of catching it?
Think : Ashley Book of Knots [Clifford Ashley] ; Knots and Fancy Ropework [Graumont & Hensel]
The former has parallel-line (& some other) hand-drawn illustrations;
the latter has photographs of knots in miscellaneous groups.
I'm a fisherman and my favorite hitch for tying a small anchor is the [i]anchor bend variant[/i]. I LOVE this hitch and not only is it neat, compact and secure, it looks damn good.
Can you describe this hitch? --is it the one where, having completed
the (basic) anchor bend one takes the tail around and tucks it again?
what they would use on a twenty pound anchor
I’d like to try a round turn and then that anchor bend tied around the standing part --the rope; set the hitch
well, then apply tension to the standing part of the round
turn and snug the hitch down towards the anchor (so, this
overall structure is a kind of noose with the hitch/knot
part tying to the rope).
The ossel hitch is one of my favorites too.
This is a [i]ring[/i] hitch --working only around objects of
a diameter as small as the rope's. Interesting that it escaped
Ashley's attention.
One more question, what's the best way to tie off an extension ladder on top of my van without using cheap bungie chords. I have ladder racks on top of my van and haven't figured out a decent way of tying them down. I use cheap bungie chords and want to start using rope for security purposes but also want something easy to untie.
You write “ladder” but “tying them down” --singular vs. plural:
which is it?
I’m amazed at the offered solutions above.
Really, SR, you’d try putting
on bight-wraps all the way around a ladder, rack cross-bar to cross-bar?!
–aside from consuming a vast amount of rope (3 lengths per ladder length
not even accounting for ladder width!), why would a ladder at all need to
be so bound? --it’s not going to go flapping in the breeze like a sail.
And … a versatackle or trucker’s hitch ?! A ladder’s about 8-12" high
lying atop a rack : where is one going to have the space (let alone
need) for these structures?
Bungee cord, no : you might continue to employ it as some kind of
tensioner, but I’ve little faith in the strength of that, or the surety
of its binding : I want the ladder on the rack snug w/o any chance
of spring.
There are ways of doing things with a single rope, but I recommend
having at least two and maybe three ropes for use --heck, you might
be tying several things up there, so don’t stop at three, even. Partly,
this is for safety redundancy.
I think that one could insist on ladders being put atop with the feet
forward, and this would preclude unwanted extension on braking,
but a snug binding should prevent that, and then one can even
tie around rungs to prevent it, as well.
How you tie off, in particular, depends on your rack. I have a
roof rack with cross-bars, and so I would be bringing the rope
over the ladder from the center of the roof area to put on a
clove hitch around the (square) bar end, and putting in an
extra half-hitch to that for security, and then --if working with
a single line-- moving on to make another securing, the first
one now isolated/independent/locked-off. But I think that
some racks might not have a protruding part, so a different
method would be needed.
Here’s a page of roof racks; is your’s like any of these? www.realtruck.com/van-racks/R195601CS.html
TMCD - you must see by now that different people have different approaches and I congratulate you on having sought a solution here - who else would you turn to after all? Instead you received a response(s) from one of our more erudite knotters that left much room for doubt. What a shame. I apologize that this has happened to you on one of your first approaches, especially with my admittedly long-time in preparation (DL - did you not observe that I was editing my post before you made yours first response and then your second?) answers. I hope that you are comfortable returning with more questions seeking answers and solutions to real problems. I stick with my original suggestion that you are welcome to ignore. Thanks for joining the forum!
It occurred to me as I was mulling this over that there are
some vans w/ladders atop them near me --and I popped
out to see what they (or it might be on fellow, two vans)
had done.
Well, the racks are something like this (a URLink from the
aforementioned site) : www.realtruck.com/cross-tread-van-racks/R141382P1C1T.html
–cross bars (square) running into (“T”-ing into) flat vertical
supports, NO protusion to tie down to on the outside.
bummer.
One might enhance these sorts of racks with loops of
polyester cable-hauling webbing/tape, now often found
about as cable-layers go about their underground doings.
That stuff (NEPCO & Bulldog? & some other makers)
cf http://www.neptco.com/website/neptco.nsf/ebd57f3a71fe06f985256929004cd0a0/b37d1834d979464d85257791006a8545?OpenDocument
is strong & UV resistant (being polyester). One could tie
short (doubled?) loops around the supports between
cross-bar & roof, and have these to tie down into in place
of the missing protuding bar-ends or other purchase.
The fellow(s) in question had a variety of securings, but
all done at one cross-bar, not a longer line taken from one
to another (unless I missed this). In one case, a shock cord
of rubber w/hooks at the end was hooked to a ladder and
then passed up’n’down over the rungs (of, two ladders,
one atop the other) and under the cross-bar. In other
cass, “Home Depot” kernmantle rope was used and in
various ways brought around ladder runs and cross-bar.
There was even some wire attachment, for one ladder;
I got the impression that this ladder isn’t expected to see
use anytime soon!? The wire attached from the easily
reached side of the rack around one side of the ladder,
depending on the other cross-bar’s tying which secured
the full width of the ladder to keep it from bouncing.
Obviously I did --and so could not see how the wraps of bights
around a ladder (well, you suggest only the structure, not how it
was to be applied) were a solution. That question remains.
OK - piece by piece:
1.With ladder racks, there are two of them (see here for instance http://www.myladderracks.com/)
Good. You did see that I gave a similar for-instance URLink?
(The ones I saw outside are like your site’s bottomost center ones;
note the flat vertical plate-like supports --not very kind to something
wrapped around them (as I suggest doing with hauling tape, thus).)
... which means that whatever gets put on them has only two places where a tie can occur.
What gets tied there, in addition, is NOT the full length of the ladder but is instead a small portion of it.
So far so good?
All understood and obvious, and all to the point of wondering how
some dubious sail-wrapping intended to stem loose fabric from flapping
comes into play on a rigid item being tied at --as you count-- just two
places! (Well, except that there are some racks that have side
rails which conceivably be used; but let’s stick with cross-bars only.)
OK - part the next:
What the which? (I’m not lobbying hard against editing, mind you)
With two cross bars (...) you need only go from one to the next - a distance of some five or six feet?
- because there is nowhere else to tie down, no matter how long the ladder is.
2.
[sic --SR got to “2” and then … ?
And the late Paul Harvey isn’t here to bring “the rest of the story”. --dl*]
Well, yes, understood to all above (and noting myself the differences
one might have with racks), your suggestion begs (and won) the question
as to how bight-wrapping is relevant at all, and not wasteful at the very
least --only “a distance of some five or six feet” if taken in this structure,
with a ladder some 18"(?) wide, consumes 6 x 3 = 18" on length alone,
plus additional for breadth of wrapping, and all that does exactly WHAT
for securing the ladder?
The implication of your [i]"you need only go from one to the next [cross bar]
a distance of some five or six feet? - because there is nowhere else to tie
down, no matter how long the ladder is"[/i] is that this Swedish furling
accomplishes something running along (a part of) the length of the ladder;
I don’t see what, and that’s my question.
(Btw, perhaps my “3 lengths per ladder length” was misleading: I didn’t
mean “full length of ladder” but “whatever length of ladder is spanned”
–so, 3 times 10 or just 5 or 6, but still tripling the span w/cordage.)
When all one needs and wants to do is to lash down the ladder(s) at
each of the two (and maybe only two even if there are more) cross-bars,
with possibly some dedicated wraps to redundantly secure the extension
to the base, and a 2nd ladder to the 1st.
Btw, there might be some usable end of line for extending the ladder
–i.e., the cord that might be used to hoist the extendable part of
the ladder (often a quarter-inch PP laid line)-- which can be used to
tie and extension rung to a base-part rung (perhaps with a clove hitch
secured with a clove to the hauling line (= “two half-hitches”)).
Ok, the name of the book is The Ultimate Encylopedia Of KNOTS & ROPEWORK, written by Geoffrey Budworth. I just learned to tie the Zeppelin Bend using the VERY simple b and q method. The book takes the begginer down a much tougher road in their attempts to teach the Zeppelin Bend, resembling spaghetti dangling from someone’s hands.lol.
At any rate, the Anchor Bend Variant that I tie, is a round turn within a round turn, simple as that. I’ve had this hitch under some tremendous stress when pulling my fifteen lb anchor off the bottom of a lake. Once it was hung up under a fifty year old Oak Tree that had fallen in the lake and I had EXTREME pressure on the rope and hitch itself, I still can’t believe it held up. I was getting ready to cut the line but was finally able to ease the boat around the other side and it let loose than the lord. Those anchors are about 25 dollars apiece. I’d like to do a tension test on the anchor bend and anchor bend variant, IMO, the anchor bend variant is a much better hitch.
Now to the ladder racks, this is going to be a tough problem for me to solve I think. I’ve read through some of the suggestions and I’ll have to go out and see which one’s work and what not. I have in the past tied them down with a reef knot, but it allows for some slack that I don’t care for. My ladder rack has a flat plate on the side to tie off around or through, it does have a hole to tie off on. I really wish I would’ve bought the other ladder racks with just a metal pole as the tie off instead of the flat face plate. My options would be limitless then, the flat metal face plate is just bulky and hard to deal with. The hole at the top of the plate is the only shot out at tying a good knot. I’ve got to figure this out thoguh, I’ve already lost one ladder going down the highway here in Indiana because the bungie broke in two.
Glad I found this site, what a wealth of knowledge to have at my finger tips.
And ... a versatackle or trucker's hitch ?! A ladder's about 8-12" high
lying atop a rack : where is one going to have the space (let alone
need) for these structures?
As for the space, there is plenty in the width of the vehicle. The need arises from ladders rattling above you on a long journey and getting on one’s nerves, even though someone has secured a ladder adequately on a rack, does not mean that it is rattle free.
Indeed ! There are some other interlocked-overhands
end-2-end joiners that are similarly presented --with a sort
of whiz-bang tying method that can achieve its whiz-bang
result only after some tedious preparation (which of course
defeats the overall whiz-bang efficiency). I tie such knots
by first forming one overhand, then reeving the other end
into as desired.
At any rate, the Anchor Bend Variant that I tie, is a round turn within a round turn, simple as that.
Which is what I thought. Yes, 'tis a simple securing of the knot.
I still can't believe it held up.
But the Anchor Bend tests at around 70% of line strength,
so you would be getting dangerously close to some kind
of potential snap-back situation (nylon rode?) in any case!
Now to the ladder racks, this is going to be a tough problem for me to solve I think.
I've read through some of the suggestions and I'll have to go out and see which one's work
and what not. I have in the past tied them down with a reef knot, but it allows for some slack
that I don't care for.
[b]My ladder rack has a flat plate on the side to tie off around or through,[/b]
it does have a hole to tie off on.
This is one bit of information that’s helpful, even necessary.
I asked another : how many ladders are you tying down?
If you have need for only tying down one, or two --some
known-in-advance fixed quantity–, you can tailor a tie-down
system to that, which might be less comfortable being used
for a varied quantity, requiring pertinent structures to be
continually relocated.
E.g., with you one tie-to-flat-plate hole,
you could
anchor the rope with a stopper knot (Fig.8, e.g.) through
the hole --knot towards ladders/roof (? or not?)–;
tie a mid-line eye-knot (the venerable overhand will do; others
will insist on something to impress folks that you “know knots”
–viz., a Butterfly eyeknot) with small eye;
take the rope over the top of the ladder (hmmm, I’m thinking
that the ladder frame will be higher than said hole --is it?),
down under the cross-bar, then come up;
tie another mid-line eyeknot (eye long enough to come over ladder);
and then reeve the tail through the first eye, then back through the
2nd eye, and back through the first --which gives you now a theoretical
2:1 advantage in hauling this securing tight (actually, though, well less);
and you haul tight through, not around the 1st-tied eye (the one
at the support plate), and tie off with some half-hitches.
And the tied structure is now resident on your rack, or removed by
untying the stopper knot, and replaced by re-tying that. It is ready
to receive the particularly sized load of a ladder or two, whatever that
might be in your case. It is NOT so ready to adjust between sizes,
though, given the position of the 2nd-tied eyeknot!
And then there are variations on this theme, perhaps taking just
the stoppered anchorage and immediate eye as useful structures
and going from there in some other way.
I've already lost one ladder going down the highway here in Indiana because the bungie broke in two.
And there was only ONE securing cordage? --not one fore, another aft?
But I have already recommended against reliance on shock cords,
at least entirely --they might help vis-a-vis damping vibrations and
ladder racket annoyance (though I think it should be possible for
the tie-down w/regular cordage to do this).
Btw, how to you REACH the rack & ladder to do this tying?
I’m looking outside at a full-sized van whose top-of-flat-vertical
plate of the rack is about 7.5’ (2.2m) high --that’s a tall reach,
and nowhere near the rack interior!
Hmm, some forum with folks who actually use such racks, for starters.
The answers offered here suggest inexperience.
Instead you received a response(s) from one of our more erudite knotters that left much room for doubt. What a shame. I apologize that this has happened to you on one of your first approaches, especially with my admittedly long-time in preparation (DL - did you not observe that I was editing my post before you made yours first response and then your second?) answers. I hope that you are comfortable returning with more questions seeking answers and solutions to real problems. I stick with my original suggestion that you are welcome to ignore.
It is a sad day when one insists on question-free utterances
–a potential triumph of dogma over dialectic.
What you offered --a method used(?) for furling a fabric sale aong a spar
readily reachable-- is hardly a seemly solution for securing a rigid ladder
to cross-bars high atop a van. You have not answered the obvious questions
about your solution : what would do and please specifically tell why .
The top of a full-sized van is over 2m high, so hardly an easy reach,
even for a normally tall person. I would be up on the rear tire or some
other rise in order to do such tying, and there isn’t such access running
along the ladder span between fore & aft cross-bars. Nor, as you had
noted in your now-edited-away attempt to explain, is there anything
there to tie the ladder TO --which begs the question as to the purpose
of the tedious forming & reeving of these bights within bights!?
As for my responding while you were editing: huh? My first response
came to your finished first, surprising-to-me (and can anyone else explain
or understand it --silence signifies nothing?!) suggestion for furling.
My reaction to your incomplete response (which you’ve now edited into
a non-explanation & gratuitous apologies) came w/o any hint of your
actions, and a late hour anyway.
The question remains. (Which all sadly reminds me of the pained attempt
to learn from KnotNow/Roy how he & Alice employed a Sheepshank in
hauling harvested wood --should’ve been a simple Q/A but it went nowhere
in several posts, with no enlightenment. And you saw that so clearly, too.)
And of course, my error, I omitted the redundancy part. I would never trust anything loaded on top of a car to only one contraption. In fact I never trusted the gutter mount of racks either. If there’s a heavy load, it might need anchoring to the bumper as well. And yes, often still, I use trucker’s hitches for tying down, but for large stuff I sometimes don’t get them tight enough and rely on frapping.
I haven’t found a solution yet, the weather here isn’t great and will certainly get out on a decent day an experiment around. Height is an issue, I’m 6-5 and still need a four or six foot step ladder if I want to tie the ladder down width wise. I can however tie the ladder down standing from the ground but only catching two rungs and performing a series of turns around the rungs/face plate, then securing and tying off through the hole at the top of the face plate. Also, there’s a back face plate, so I’ll have two critical tie off points.
I’m toying with the idea of using a stopper knot…stevedore, on the outside of the face plate hole, running the rope through the hole and turning at least two ladder rungs, then bring the rope back through the hole and tying off with some sort of hitch. I don’t know, maybe a round turn and two half hitches, it’s got to be something easily tied/untied that I can teach the crew, but I want reasonable confidence it will work.
If it’s one or two ladders only, you should be able to make it quite secure with square lashings. But you might find lashings too tedious and time consuming to untie.
For one ladder only, you can probably use some binding knot. Double constrictors, gleipnir finished off with a reef knot, a figure eight or buntline hitch finished off with a locking half hitch http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=2649.0
I have very limited experience with tying ladders to a truck, so please let the other forum members validate my ideas before you try
(I’m not lobbying hard against editing, mind you)